Leia Organa Doesn't Live Here Anymore
by aeternium
Summary: Although the Force works in mysterious ways, it ultimately has a purpose, though we may not know it yet. Response to LJ challenge: time travel.


**escape from these things**

"I haven't been fair to you."

The senator turns from the consul and looks at her steadily. Several moments pass and she wonders if this is her punishment – the silent treatment. Juvenile, not something she would have expected from the legend, but no less deserved.

"No," she says simply.

"And I'd like to take the opportunity to apologize," Leia goes on.

"You must have a high opinion of Mon Mothma if you are so willing to accept her validation. Especially after such vehement disbelief of the situation on your part."

Ouch. True, but still bitter to her ears.

Then again, what else was she meant to think? Twenty-years dead politicians just don't show up unannounced, never mind looking years younger than their age at death.

_Leia, Leia,_ she can almost hear Sabé's voice echoing through the years, _always so technical. Trust your instincts more. What do you feel?_

This is a far cry from target practice, but the principle holds true.

Leia nods. "You were a close ally of Mothma's. I see no reason to doubt such validation."

"You know I have no proof. I'm doing the best I can."

She thinks she's yet to win the battle. Leia frowns.

"That's the most you can do at this point. We'll do our best to understand how this is all possible. We _will_ find a way to get you home."

She nods, smiling, yet there's something still burning behind her eyes. She's far from home, in a strange place (_in a strange time_), unsure if she can ever really get back. Leia knows the feeling.

"Senator Amidala – "

"Padmé," the young woman corrects her mildly. "We _are_ friends now, aren't we?"

"Yes," Leia finds herself saying. "Yes, we're friends."

**communicate before it is understood**

"So tell me about him."

Leia sets her jaw, puts on her resolute face before turning around. Padmé's kicked her feet up onto the arm of the chair, and a small smile of amusement flickers across her features. Of course she's only just met him – he'd been on Shili before being recalled to Hoth just after she'd gone to Hanna with Mothma – and now she's really met the whole gang.

What an entrance.

"There's nothing to tell," she replies. Best-kept secret on Coruscant: Leia Organa has the best sabacc face this side of the Rishi Maze. She simply doesn't care to use it all that often.

"Bantha crap," Padmé deadpans, and Leia almost laughs. It's something Luke would say. "After that little display? I need details."

It's a far cry from the stiff (albeit bewildered) politician from the month before. The more people who come to accept her as a new presence in the Alliance, the more Padmé pulls down those protective walls of hers, and the more Leia truly appreciates that this woman is only twenty-five years old.

That doesn't mean she'll tell her anything.

"I promise you, there's nothing to tell."

"Right."

"Right."

"Just admit it, you can't decide."

"That's – no, that's not it at all."

"Then you've chosen? It's Solo, isn't it?"

Leia purses her lips. "I was angry, that's all it meant. From now on, Captain Solo and General Skywalker can continue their little man-off without dragging me into it."

"Skywalker?"

Padmé's gone white, her brow furrowed.

"Yes, Luke."

"I – I didn't know his last name."

"They're fond of noun-verbs on Tatooine, apparently."

"Tatooine."

"His home planet. You might not – "

"I know. I 'm… familiar with the place."

Suddenly she's withdrawn again, aloof like the days before – had it really only been a month? _People just don't behave like that,_ she had thought. That was before she knew it was an act, one the young politician has down to an art. It's her Senator Amidala. Padmé Naberrie is something else entirely.

Still, that explains nothing.

Except that she's lonely, because that's what Senator Amidala is in this strange new world. Devoid of familiar faces and names, save for one.

"You know his father."

Padmé avoids her gaze, but nods tightly.

"I think so," she says quietly, and Leia feels the old hopelessness rising from her. "It would explain things." Then she looks up, her eyes bright, and suddenly Leia _feels_ things from her. Is that hope? It could be, but it's more like what she herself experiences when she solves a particularly difficult series of mathematical equations. Like she's finally worked it out.

"Where are his parents now?"

"Dead," she says regretfully. "All the Jedi are, surely you've noticed?"

Padmé recoils as though struck. "Anakin," she whispers, disbelieving, needing the validity. "Anakin Skywalker?"

Leia nods, though it nearly breaks her heart to do so.

The official records on the senator from Naboo commend her as a tireless warrior for justice, a constant ally of then-Chancellor Palpatine. They state her victories in the old senate, her triumph as queen over the Trade Federation, but of her personal life, nothing. Family, nothing. Friends, nothing. Did she have a mother? A brother? A boyfriend? Padmé won't say. What was Anakin Skywalker to her? Who _is_ this woman?

Leia turns to leave, and stops when she hears her name.

When she turns, Padmé is clutching her necklace tightly.

"And I'm dead, too."

Leia nods, confirming again what she'd told her a month ago, unsure what that has to do with anything.

**the material of art**

"So?" she asks anxiously. For the sake of another orphan, she hopes she did the right thing.

Luke looks down for a moment and her heart skips a beat. _Oh fuck._ Then he looks up, grins, and steps fully across the threshold into her room. Padmé is behind him, holding his hand.

**business today consists in persuading crowds**

"Tell me about this operation," Padmé says, smiling, and Leia smirks as Lando bristles with pride. Padmé, ever the diplomat, accepts the inamorato's arm just as Han takes her own hand, and they continue on down the hallway.

Leia tries not to notice the drumline banging away in her chest. This is ridiculous. This is _Han Solo_, so she ignores it. She focuses instead on what Lando's been saying to Padmé.

"So you see, since we're a small operation, we don't fall into the jurisdiction of the Empire."

"So you're a part of the mining guild, then?" Leia asks, turning her attentions.

Lando laughs. "No, not actually," he says. "Our operation is small enough not to be noticed… which is advantageous for everybody since our customers are anxious to avoid attracting attention to themselves." Of course. No friend of Han's could ever hope to be that respectable.

She and Padmé find one another's gaze as the conversation continues, and the latter smiles fondly, rolling her eyes towards Calrissian. It's obvious she's familiar with his type. Luke's father? No, more likely the oily-tongued senators she works with. Padmé's Jedi husband would be humble and blunt, an honest man, a breath of fresh air from the obsequious game of politics.

"But things have developed that will insure security," Lando is saying. "I've just made a deal that will keep the Empire out of here forever."

Leia is about to ask exactly what this 'deal' is, and Padmé's curiosity is frank. She wants to do the same.

But the answer arrives before either woman can ask the question.

Han's blaster flies from his hand after a mere shot.

"Monster," Padmé snarls, and between her fear and disgust, Leia almost feels sorry for the man who killed Anakin Skywalker and must now face his wife.

Meanwhile, Vader stands very still.

**fear in a handful of dust**

They stand by the window for a long time, not one of them speaking a word, yet Leia can feel the tension between Luke and his mother. She wonders if it's normal for emotions between two people to be so palpable to an outsider.

But something happened. Something's changed, and Vader's the common factor. What could have happened when he took Padmé privately aside to disquiet her so? Had he given her a blow-by-blow account of Anakin's death, every detail drawn out? Leia doesn't think so. Vader's far too blunt for that.

And what of Luke? More than a hand had been lost in his duel with the Sith, that of all things was obvious.

"Luke…"

"Don't."

She frowns, then squeezes her eyes shut.

"You, too?" she finally asks.

There is a long, painful, drawn-out moment in which Luke does nothing but stare. He stares at her as though searching – _begging_ – for an answer in her features, and Padmé doesn't turn away. He'll get no answer without asking the question.

"Did you know?"

Again, Padmé frowns.

"How could I have?" she says. "It was three years after my time. I'm here, remember?"

"But did you _know?_"

"No. Definitely not. He wasn't – even when he _did_ – there are parts of it you don't understand, Luke. Things that hadn't happened yet – he only told me just now."

She half-glances at Leia, who takes that as her cue to leave. This is family business, drama she needn't be a part of. She's diplomat enough to know when she isn't wanted, and smart enough to just leave it be.

The truth is, she's glad to get away. She has other things on her mind.

When she arrives at the quarters just now assigned to her, Leia closes the door and magnetically seals it. She quietly undoes the braid atop her head and lets her hair loose for the first time in what feels like years. Then she crosses to the bed and falls lightly onto her back.

_I love you._

I know.

He knew the whole time, the bastard.

She doesn't bother to wipe away the free-flowing tears. It's been ages since she had a good cry and the flutter of falling and the sudden understanding and the rightness and the confession and the fear that he was gone forever and now the uncertainty that he'll come back gives her this simple right.

**who will risk going too far**

"More comfortable?" Luke asks, smiling.

Leia, wrapped in Han's jacket and arms, smiles and gives him a definite, "Force, yes."

"Mom?" he asks. They'd reached some sort of secret understanding several months earlier, and since then he'd stopped calling her 'Padmé.' Han finds it bizarre. Leia finds it sort of adorable.

"Your father would be horrified to see me like that," she says frankly.

Luke's back stiffens, but Leia thinks she's the only one to notice. Here, warmed not by the oppressive heat of Tatooine's twin suns but by Han's embrace, all is right with the galaxy. Whatever drama between mother and son that they've still not sought to share with her can wait, just for this brief moment, and dependable Han sees to that.

"Well, yeah," he says. "I think any guy would be pissed to see his wife dressed like that outside their bedroom."

He laughs, and Leia smacks him lightly. She doesn't mean it.

But Padmé smiles ruefully, not out of yearning for an absent husband, but out of genuine remorse.

"Anakin hates the Hutts," she says quietly. "He would have been outraged at the very idea of Jabba using me like that."

Leia frowns, briefly remembering that Anakin Skywalker, like his son, was a native of Tatooine. Padmé notices that all three of them are staring at her, expecting her to continue. There's a story there to be told.

"He has his reasons," she says simply, and that's the end of it.

**home is where one starts from**

There's an explosion high in the noon sky, and Leia's heart jumps a beat.

_Luke… Padmé… _

But then it returns to its normal pace, back into rhythm, because somehow in her soul she knows they weren't on the Death Star just now. Luke wasn't, she knows that much. She settles comfortably back against the enormous tree trunk, the throbbing in her busted arm a mere pinprick juxtaposed against what she calmly accepts to be true: the Emperor is dead. And so is Vader.

"I'm sure Luke wasn't on that thing when it blew."

Oh, Han. Always there to be was he thinks she needs him to be, to say what he thinks she needs him to say.

"He wasn't," Leia confirms, glad he doesn't ask her how she knows.

She doesn't have proof. She only has what she feels implicitly in her soul, wondering again whether Luke's speculation that she is Force-sensitive might have an element of truth in it.

So what she knows is this: The Emperor is dead. Darth Vader is dead. The death of the Empire is at hand. Luke is flying back to them.

And Padmé?

Leia closes her eyes painfully and considers what she also knows to be true: Padmé is dead. At least to their world, but she is returned to where she belongs.

It's a jolt in the Force that brings Leia to snap her eyes open once more, and she's looking through narrowed eyes out of her fighter's windshield for the incoming attack when Dad's laughter brings her back to reality.

"Calm down, Lei," he says gleefully over the comm system. "It's over, remember?"

And then it all comes rushing back to her. The Emperor is dead, at the hand of the man he'd groomed for an apprentice, the man he'd assumed dead all these years. There are no more attacks coming, because there is no one to command them to do so. Darth Malefis is dead, too, at the hand of the daughter of the man whose place he'd taken. It's time to go home, at least back to Mom and Luke.

_And Han._

"Yeah," she grins, pulling her fighter into a little loop just for the hell of it. "Yeah, it's over."


End file.
